In Beyond Politics, renowned cultural historian Dawson diagnoses the crisis of his time (the book was published in 1939) as fundamentally cultural rather than political in nature. In his view, the power of the ideologies which were preparing to plunge the world into war was precisely their nature as primarily cultural and spiritual movements - a challenge that liberal democracy, with its division between private and public spheres, was wholly unprepared to meet. Indeed, any essentially political effort to face these ideologies on their own ground must itself succumb to the totalitarian temptation. The maintenance of freedom is therefore dependent on the activity of independent organizations to cultivate community.
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